The Mulatto Millennium

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Some might say my parents went too far. I remember my father schooling me and my siblings on our racial identity. He would grill us over a greasy linoleum kitchen table, a single bright lightbulb swinging overhead: "Do you have any black friends? How many? Who?” And we, his obedient children, his soldiers in the battle for negritude, would rattle off the names of the black kids we called friends.

Something must have sunk in, because my sister and I grew up with disdain for those who identified as mulatto. A very particular breed got under my skin: the kind who answered, meekly, "Everything" to that incessant question, "What are you?" I veered away from groups of them-children, like myself, who had been born of interracial minglings after dark. Instead, I surrounded myself with bodies darker than my own, hoping the color might rub off on me.

One year, while working as an investigative journalist in Hollywood, I made up a list, evidence I've long since burned. Luckily for my career, it was never published. It was an exposé of who is passing in Hollywood, called "And You Thought It Was Just a Tan?" There were three categories:

Black Folks You May Not Have Known Are Black

• Mariah Carey
• Jennifer Beals
• Tom Hanks
• Carly Simon
• Slash
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Johnny Depp
• Michael Jackson
• Kevin Bacon
• Robin Quivers
• Elizabeth Berkeley
• Paula Abdul

Black Folks Who May Not Know They Are Black

• Mariah Carey
• Jennifer Beals
• Tom Hanks
• Carly Simon
• Slash
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Johnny Depp
• Michael Jackson
• Kevin Bacon
• Robin Quivers
• Elizabeth Berkeley
• Paula Abdul

Black Folks You Kinda Wish Weren’t Black

• O.J. Simpson
• Michael Jackson
• Gary Coleman
• Robin Quivers

Needless to say, my list wouldn't have gone over too well with the Mulatto Nation posse (M.N. to those in the know). It was nearly published in a local newsweekly, but the editors balked at the last minute. I bet they're thanking their lucky stars now; in this age of fluidity, it doesn't pay to be blacker than thou.

These days, M.N. folks in Washington have their own census category—multiracial—but the extremist wing of the Mulatto Nation finds it inadequate. They want to take things a step further. I guess they have a point. Why lump us all together? Eskimos have 40 different words for snow. In South Africa, during apartheid, they had 14 different types of coloreds. But we've decided on one word, multiracial, to describe a whole nation of diverse people who have absolutely no relation, cultural or otherwise, to one another. In light of this deficiency, I propose the following coinages:

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